# Ajayan | In 1978, just two years after Eravikulam gained national status, a group of college students arrived on a study tour, led by their professor and bright with curiosity. They were welcomed by the range officer, later a Divisional Forest Officer there, steadfast as the mountains he served. With quiet authority, he warned them against littering and urged reverence for the park’s flora and fauna, reminding them that the mist-laden heights were not merely a classroom, but a sanctuary.
Yet the morning after they left, signs of neglect remained. Unperturbed but resolute, the ranger and his staff gathered the litter, packed it carefully, and sent it to the professor with a brief terse note, declaring it their final visit.
Crowned the roof of Kerala, Eravikulam National Park, home to the fabled neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana), which blushes across its slopes once every twelve years, and the sure-footed Nilgiri tahr (Nilgiritragus hylocrius), marks its Golden Jubilee. As the park celebrates fifty years of guarded wilderness, Mohan Alembath recounted to Metro Vaartha about those early, testing days when conservation here was more conviction than comfort.
He recalls being asked in 1978 by a senior forest official whether he would accept a posting to Eravikulam, newly declared a national park. In those days, wildlife assignments were hardly prized—often seen as punitive exile and a blemish on a career. Yet Alembath accepted without hesitation. Where others saw isolation, he found purpose; where many saw hardship, he glimpsed the chance to guard a fragile crown of mountains; and in doing so helped shape the sanctuary that now stands among India’s proudest conservation legacies.
The day he arrived at Eravikulam National Park, Alembath wrapped himself in a blanket against the mountain chill and walked into its rolling grasslands. Beneath a moonlit, star-strewn sky, valleys sinking into silvered silence, he felt an instant, irrevocable pull. “The night was so enchanting,” he recalls, “I fell in love with the place at once.”
Years later, speaking of the now-legendary episode in which he returned a parcel of litter to the professor, Alembath notes that he was not alone in his resolve. The renowned ecologist and conservationist Clifford G Rice was then studying the park’s fragile ecology and its Nilgiri tahr. Rice’s presence and his steadfast encouragement strengthened Alembath’s conviction that Eravikulam’s rare heights deserved uncompromising protection.
Winning national status for Eravikulam was no easy ascent. After 1971, vast private forests beyond the tea estates were vested with the Kerala Government, yet appeals from forest officials to preserve these high ranges met scant enthusiasm. Momentum gathered in New Delhi. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whose commitment to conservation was both personal and political, became a decisive force in safeguarding Eravikulam, and later Silent Valley National Park. At the Centre, MK Ranjitsinh, renowned for pioneering wildlife initiatives, pressed the case to protect the land of the Nilgiri tahr, armed with compelling scientific evidence.
There was also persuasive advocacy from the field. British planter JC Goldsbury, manager of the then Tata Finlay estate (now Kanan Devan) in Munnar, was known for his deep concern for the tahr and lent weight to the conservation argument. Together, science, statesmanship and steadfast field voices converged.
If a terse telegram from conservationist VS Vijayan to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, sent at the height of the Silent Valley agitation, was enough to stall clearance for the hydel project proposal until his report arrived, sending Kerala’s Electricity Minister back empty-handed, the fate of Eravikulam National Park turned on a different hinge.
Rice scarcity hastened the salvation. In 1974, Union Food Minister Annasaheb Shinde, who also held the forest portfolio, offered a pivotal bargain: if Kerala established a sanctuary for the Nilgiri tahr, a cause dear to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Centre would ensure ample rice supplies to the State. Conservation and compulsion met in quiet barter; as the sanctuary proposal advanced with uncommon speed, so did food grains. Providentially, Ranjitsinh, then serving as Union Food Secretary, helped clear the way, securing both sustenance for the plains and a future for Eravikulam National Park.
Spread across 97 sq km, Eravikulam National Park hums with visitors and cradles South India’s loftiest summit Anamudi. Framed by the Pooyyamkutty and Idamalayar forests and the silver cascade of Lakkom waterfalls, its high-altitude mosaic of grasslands is veined with perennial streams.
These storied grasslands, meticulously studied by PV Karunakaran, form the stronghold of the Nilgiri tahr, listed as threatened on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Three decades after his seminal work, Karunakaran notes with guarded satisfaction that the grassland structure remains largely intact.
Yet, he sounds a note of caution. Ferns are advancing along the fringes, warranting close monitoring by the forest department. Subtle shifts in high-altitude ground orchids, delicate sentinels of soil and climate, have also caught his eye. Such quiet ecological murmurs, he suggests, deserve attention.
Once a hunting preserve for the British planters who ruled the surrounding tea estates, the park has journeyed far from its colonial past. Over the decades, attitudes softened and stewardship strengthened; the support of the Kanan Devan Hills Produce Company lent weight to conservation efforts of the forest department, aiding the protection of the park’s mountain ungulates.
Today, of the roughly 2,700 Nilgiri tahr found across Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Eravikulam shelters over 840, according to the latest census. For now, however, the park rests in quiet seclusion. It is calving season, and the slopes belong to the tahrs and their young. In a month, the gates will reopen, and visitors can once again tread the high paths.
Acclaimed US naturalist and field biologist George B Schaller arrived in Munnar in 1969 to study the mountain goats of the high ranges. So captivated was he by their grace and grit that he devoted a chapter, “Cloud Goats”, to the Nilgiri tahr in his book Stones of Silence. He christened them “Cloud Goats” for their uncanny mastery of the cliffs.
Rich in life and layered in silence, Eravikulam National Park also shelters more than 50 species of mammals, nearly 140 varieties of birds, including the Nilgiri pipit, a vibrant array of reptiles and amphibians, and over a hundred species of butterflies that fleck its grasslands with fleeting colour.
In its deeper folds, wild dogs and leopards move like shadows, and at times the stillness is pierced by the stark groan of a tahr taken by a prowling carnivore. Gaurs graze in muscular calm, and elephants wander through, for an enduring corridor links Munnar to Athirappilly and Valparai.
Environmentalist K Chengappa, former senior official of Tata Tea in Munnar, looks back with quiet contentment on a life spent bridging enterprise and ecology. Now settled in his hometown of Kodagu, he recalls his long years with the High Range Wildlife Preservation Society, serving alternately as president and secretary, and his two-decade tenure on the Kerala Wildlife Board as chapters of deep engagement with the mountains he loved.
Among many cherished memories, one stands apart. Convinced that conservation could not succeed without the involvement of indigenous communities, Chengappa pressed for tribespeople to be appointed as forest watchers. The proposal met bureaucratic resistance, chiefly over minimum educational qualifications. Undeterred, he persuaded the then Forest Minister KP Nooruddin to relax the norms. A gazette notification followed, clearing the path for several local families to find dignified employment, binding livelihood with stewardship.
Tourist tides surge into Munnar, swelling into a veritable deluge during the once-in-twelve-years bloom of the neelakurinji. On the eve of the 2006 flowering, the then warden of Eravikulam National Park, Roy P Thomas, made a farsighted move: he brought tribespeople into a new venture through their eco-development societies.
With bank loans arranged to purchase small vans, these community-run vehicles began ferrying visitors from designated parking zones to Rajmala, the park’s gateway, an arrangement that continues to this day. The initiative not only secured livelihoods, generating profits reportedly touching Rs 70 crore over the years, but also imposed a gentle discipline on the hills. By restricting private vehicles and regulating entry, it spared Munnar the chaos of serpentine traffic snarls.
When the neelakurinji bloomed again in 2018, traffic flowed with remarkable ease, a quiet tribute to Roy’s deft stewardship and to a model where conservation, community and commerce moved in rare harmony.
Forged by the tireless dedication of former officials such as James Zachariah and Shivadas earlier, safeguarded by vigilant watchers like Muthuvan Krishnan, and now steered by Hari Krishnan, the park has earned wide acclaim. It was named India’s best national park in 2025 and recently adjudged the cleanest in Idukki district. With humility and resolve, Hari Krishnan calls it a golden legacy that he has inherited and pledges to preserve its proud standing. He adds that the park now has fully cashless transactions, bringing ease and efficiency to every visitor.